DOW JONES, A NEWS CORP COMPANY

Nasdaq 5034.06 0.57%

U.S. 10 Yr

DJIA 18506.41 0.73%

-18/32 Yield 1.538%

Crude Oil 45.48 1.63%

Euro 1.1119 0.26%

Subscribe Now

Home

World

U.S.

Politics

Economy

Business

Tech

Markets

Opinion

Arts

Life

Sign In

Real Estate

THE NUMBERS GUY

Latest Issue on the Ballot: How to Hold a Vote

By CARL BIALIK
Updated May 14, 2011 12:01 a.m. ET

A new voting method with the potential to alter election results has
sparked a feud among political scientists and statisticians.
More than a dozen cities across the U.S. have adopted the system,
called instant runoff, in the last decade, including San Francisco,
Minneapolis and Oakland, Calif. Several more, including Memphis
and Portland, Maine, are using it for the first time this year.

Most Popular Videos

1.

Pokmon Go: How

to Play

A350
2. Airbus
Performs Near
Vertical Takeoff
Juno Sends
3. NASA's
First View of
Jupiter and Its
Moons
VP Short
4. Trump's
List vs. Clinton's VP
Long List
Jean Quan was elected mayor of Oakland last fall under a voting system known as
instant runoff. ASSOCIATED PRESS

Companies
5. Chinese
Chase Hollywood
Star Power

In instant runoff elections, candidates are ranked by preference,

allowing voters to have a say in the electoral outcome even if their
top choice doesn't have a shot at winning. (Think Ralph Nader
supporters who nevertheless preferred to see Al Gore win over

Most Popular Articles

1.

Pokmon Go: Why

You Should Play

George W. Bush in 2000.) In practice, instant runoffs can be applied

only to contests with three or more candidates, but advocates say
the system could encourage more third-party contenders to enter

Attack: How
2. Grid
America Could Go
Dark

competitive races.
As the system has gained support, a backlash has emerged as well.

Ginsburgs
3. Opinion:
Exit Interviews

Last week, voters in the U.K. roundly defeated a proposal to institute

ranked voting. Similar approaches have been rejected by Burlington,
Vt., Fort Collins, Colo., and Honolulu.

Employers Dont Give Two

4. Why
Weeks Notice

At the same time, some mathematicians and political scientists warn

that as instant-runoff systems are adopted, there is a risk that
candidates with the broadest support could end up losing.

"It's silly to try out a bad system and then see its failures enacted,"
says Steven Brams, professor of politics at New York University who
supports a different voting system, called approval voting, in which
voters back as many candidates as they want. The candidate with the
most overall votes wins.
Prof. Brams and instant runoff's leading advocate Rob Richie,
executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group FairVotehave
been debating the merits of alternative voting systems for decades.
They and many political scientists say just about any reasonable
system would be preferable to the one most commonly used, in
which each voter gets one vote and the candidate with the most
votes wins, raising the possibility that the two leading choices will
split the bulk of the votes and hand the victory to a third candidate.

NUMBERS GUY BLOG

But Messrs. Brams and

Richie disagree on which

A Split Vote on Alternative Electoral

Systems

system should replace the

current one. Mr. Richie,
who has advised cities on

adopting the instant runoff, says the system is practical. "I'm

interested in talking about reform and changing politics, not
winning the math debate," he says.
In an instant-runoff race, voters rank as many candidates as they
want. The votes are tallied in a series of rounds, which, in practice,
occur nearly instantaneously via computer scoring, hence the
"instant" in the name. In the first round, all ballots are sorted by
their first choice. If one candidate has more than 50% of the vote at
that stage, she or he wins the election. But if no candidate secures a
majority, the last-place candidate is eliminated, and ballots ranking
that candidate first are reassigned to their second preference, if one
is indicated. Again, any candidate with 50% of votes wins. If there
isn't a winner, the cycle is repeated until someone gets a majority of
votes.
Some supporters of instant runoffs like that voters can rank a thirdparty candidate first without fearing their second choice will be
derailed. They also note that the system is less expensive than
holding a second, runoff election weeks or months later, when
turnout often is lower.
But instant-runoff voting can produce some quirky outcomes. In a
scenario cited by the system's detractors, a candidate who would be
preferred by most voters if pitted against just one of the other
candidates can lose. Consider a four-person race in which the
centrist candidate is the first choice of 10% of voters and the second
choice of the other 90%, who split their first-place votes evenly
among each of the other three candidates. The centrist, despite

Is Trumps
5. Pence
Choice for Vice
President, Senior
Official Says

being preferred by 70% of voters to each of the other three

candidates, is eliminated in the first round after receiving the fewest
first-place votes.
Mr. Richie says the candidates with more first-place votes would
make better leaders. "You want executives who have followers, and
who have wind at their back," he says.
Terry Reilly, a retired engineer and former chair of the campaign
finance review and ethics board for San Jose, Calif., once supported
instant runoffs but has since come to oppose the system over
concerns about possible odd outcomes. Mr. Reilly carried out an
independent analysis of last November's Oakland mayoral election,
which used the instant runoff. He discovered that Don Perata, who
lost despite having far more first-place votes than eventual winner
Jean Quan, paradoxically could have won if 2,400 more people had
ranked the third-place finisher, Rebecca Kaplan, first, while leaving
Mr. Perata off the ballot entirely.
Instant runoff "is being pitched everywhere, and I ain't buying," Mr.
Reilly says.
Robert Winters, a Wellesley College mathematician who has studied
electoral systems, says the way to know which systems work best is
to try them out. "I would love to see a variety of voting methods
adopted on a small scale," says Prof. Winters. "They all have flaws,
but it's helpful to see how they work with real voters."
Write to Carl Bialik at numbersguy@wsj.com

Subscribe

U.S. Edition

Sign In

WSJ Membership

Customer Service

Tools & Features

Ads

More

WSJ+ Membership Benefits

Customer Center

Emails & Alerts

Advertise

Content Partnerships

Digital Subscription

Live Help

Guides

Advertise Locally

Corrections

Print Subscription

Redesign Guided Tour

My News

Commercial Real Estate Ads

Jobs at WSJ

Print and Digital Subscription

Notice to Subscribers

RSS Feeds

Place a Classified Ad

News Archive

Topics

Sell Your Business

Register for Free

Why Subscribe?

TOP

Download WSJ Apps for iOS

and Android

Video Center

Sell Your Home

Watchlist

Recruitment & Career Ads

Reprints

Corporate Subscriptions
Podcasts
Professor Journal
Student Journal

n
Dow Jones Products
Private Markets

Privacy Policy

Barron's

BigCharts

realtor.com

Cookie Policy

DJX

Dow Jones Newswires

Risk & Compliance

Copyright Policy

WSJ Conference

Data Policy

Factiva

Financial News

WSJ Pro Central Banking

Subscriber Agreement & Terms of Use

Copyright 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Mansion Global
WSJ Video

MarketWatch

WSJ Wine

Your Ad Choices